The burned shell is all that remains of an apartment complex in Wheaton that caught fire on Nov. 22, Thursday leaving five people dead. / News-Leader file photo

Written by

The company that oversees the Wheaton apartment complex where four adults and an 8-year-old boy died in a Thanksgiving Day fire disabled the manual fire alarms about a decade ago.

“There are fire pulls in the breezeway, and they have not operated for ten years,” said Rick Schroeder, the president of Bell Management, Inc. of Joplin. “All the tenants were told they didn’t work when they moved in. We had problems with people pulling them in the middle of the night at all hours. That’s why they were disabled.”

But Ellen Doherty, 25, the sole survivor of the second-story apartment where fire started at the Blue Ridge Apartments, said no one told her that the fire alarms didn’t work. Doherty told investigators from Barry County and the state fire marshal’s office that she ran outside and pulled fire alarms. Nothing happened.

“I tried,” Doherty said in a followup interview last week with the News-Leader. “They didn’t work.”

Doherty’s mother, Molly Doherty, 54, and boyfriend, Jonathan “Jay” Gemmecke, 32, both died in the fire. Also killed were Mary Henning, 43; Henning’s 8-year-old son, Brandon Thurston; and Henning’s boyfriend, Corey Hasche, 23. Authorities have said that all five apparently died of smoke inhalation.

Officials have said that Blue Ridge Apartments did have working smoke detectors, although a relative of Henning, Melissa Cooper, has said that Henning’s apartment didn’t have smoke detectors.

No statewide fire code

Wheaton, a rural community of about 800 that is 60 miles southwest of Springfield, doesn’t have a fire code that would govern when fire alarms are required. Missouri has no statewide fire code, although some counties and cities such as Springfield have their own codes.

Schroeder said the standard building code that his architects follow calls for a smoke detector in each unit. The Blue Ridge Apartments were built with three smoke detectors in each unit. Each building also had red box fire alarms that could be sounded by pulling a lever.

(Page 2 of 3)

Schroeder said the building included firewalls between every unit and between the breezeway. The walls are designed to protect against a fire such as the Thanksgiving blaze. Schroeder said fire investigators told him the front door and the window was apparently left open and that the tenants initially tried to fight the fire themselves.

“It blew the fire through the breezeway and up around the building,” Schroeder said.

The two-story building has eight two-bedroom units with a breezeway between four units. The complex also includes another eight-unit building.

The project was approved in 1996 by the Missouri Housing Development Commission and received tax credits for low-income housing developments. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development helped finance the development and regularly inspected it.

USDA spokesman Greg Batson did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls from the News-Leader about fire safety requirements. An official with the limited partnership that owns the low-income housing has said the apartments recently passed an inspection by the USDA.

Schroeder said fire alarms were also disabled at other buildings similar in size to theWheaton apartments that his company manages. Bell Management oversees about about 3,700 apartments in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Schroeder said he couldn’t say how many buildings don’t have working fire alarms.

Bill stalled in committee

A bill that would establish uniform state fire and building codes was introduced in January by state Rep. Tim Meadows, D-Imperial, in the Missouri House, but it didn’t make it out of the Local Government Committee. The bill wouldn’t have required manual fire alarms in developments the size of the Wheaton apartment complex, but it would have established uniform statewide standards for how structures are built and what fire protection they have.

“In situations like this it breaks your heart ...” said state Rep. Stacey Newman, D-Richmond Heights, the co-sponsor of the House bill that would have established a statewide fire code. “It’s tragic, and it’s irresponsible of us not to address this.”

(Page 3 of 3)

Meadows said the bill was opposed by home builders and rural residents.

“Many of the rural builders are not in support of this because they see it as more restricting,” Meadows said.

Jessica Ruh, Henning’s sister, also wants Missouri to pass a fire safety law. She wants it named after her nephew, Brandon. His body was burned so badly the sheriff’s investigator initially couldn’t determine whether he was male or female.

“My family couldn’t get out,” Ruh said. “Fire safety is important. It shouldn’t take the death of five people to change the law.”

The cause of the fire at the Blue Ridge Apartments, which was reported at 3:23 a.m., has not been determined. Authorities have previously said that they haven’t been able to rule out the possibility of an electrical malfunction. Doherty told investigators that some of the tenants smoked but said that no one smoked in the living room where the fire started.

Thomas Schroeder, the general partner of Wheaton Apartments, L.P., discounted the possibility of electrical problems.

“The only electrical problems would be if someone would hook something up to the plug, and it was faulty,” Schroeder said. “If you use copper wire, you never have problems after 15 years.”

Doherty told investigators that she woke up and saw fire behind the love seat in the apartment, according to the report from the sheriff’s office. Gemmecke poured water on the fire but could not put it out, according to the Barry County sheriff’s office.

“Ellen stated they pulled all of the fire alarm levers outside the apartment,” wrote Doug Henry, a detective with the sheriff’s office. “Ellen then stated that she went to the laundry room downstairs to try and get a fire extinguisher, but the laundry room door was locked.”

Doherty told investigators that she was screaming the entire time as she tried to alert the other tenants. She told investigators that the heat was too strong for her or her boyfriend to reach her mother, who had taken a sleeping pill before going to bed.

"Unfortunate" that alarms not required

She told the News-Leader that Missouri should require apartments to have working manual fire alarms.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the law does not require what really could have been a life saver,” she said.

Rick Schroeder said that if the apartments are rebuilt they will have fire sprinklers. He wouldn’t comment on whether the state should require fire alarms in apartment complexes.

Bell Management’s website lists awards it has received for property management, including being named the property management firm of the year in 2006 in the Missouri governor’s award.

“It’s important for people to know that we’re running a first-class operation,” Schroeder said. “The health and safety of our tenants is our number one priority. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost their lives.”